Salem - "Till the World Ends" (Britney Spears remake) (video)

I’m as baffled as you are that it this latest Screwed version of Britney Spears’s single “Til the World Ends” is actually quite good.

I’m down with witch house, even though its not particularly witchy or housey, but Salem have always struck me as being the most unlikely of the genre’s superstars in that they’re not really that good. Their records to these ears much resemble their public persona- lazy, fucked up, and disinterested. Which is not even to mention their contributions to the mystifying trend of rape ballads. Then again, I was never one for their most prominent antecedent, DJ Screw. So, I wait in anticipation for the tipping point of this obsessive record-screwing (this decade’s substitute for the mashup), even if there have been some quality results of the drag phenomena (the 800x slower Justin Bieber track, AIDS-3D’s mixes).

With that said, I’m as baffled as you are that it this latest Screwed version of Britney Spears’s single “Til the World Ends” is actually quite good. Even better is this video, which draws out the apocalyptic potential of the lines “keep on dancin’ ‘til the world ends” along with night vision footage of anonymous bombing activity in a desert region. Even the simple addition of SFX scream in the mix adds great leverage to the footage. Thanks to Kek-W for the tip-off on this one.

Timothy Gabriele is a writer who studied English and Film at the University of Massachussetts at Amherst. He currently lives in the New Haven, CT region with his family. His column, The Difference Engine, appears regularly at PopMatters. He can be found blogging at 555 Enterprises.